From studying fish abundance at her Alma Mater, the University of Western Australia, Amy Rose Coghlan switched to researching fish distributions at the Sea Around Us at the University of British Columbia. That is 14,843 kilometres away from home.
But that wasn’t a straight jump. Continue reading
Text by Daniel Pauly
On March 17, I met the Dalai Lama for a brief moment, following a long keynote speech he gave at a conference on ‘Buddhism in the 21st Century’, held in Lalanda, in the Indian State of Bihar.
It was not that I had suddenly given up on my freedom from religion. Rather, when I was invited to participate in this conference – along with a few western scientists involved in environmental conservation and animal welfare – I did not find any good reason why I should not accept, given that Buddhism appears to be the rare faith that does not require you to check your knowledge of physics, biology and history, as well common sense at the door.
Sarah Popov and Dyhia Belhabib. Photo by Valentina Ruiz Leotaud
As we mentioned in a previous blog post, Dyhia Belhabib, Program Manager-Fisheries for Ecotrust Canada and a West Africa advisor to the Sea Around Us, and Sarah Popov, a research assistant at the Sea Around Us, were invited to Senegal by the MAVA Foundation with the aim of meeting a range of fisheries stakeholders and addressing the main challenges the subregion’s fishing sector is facing.
The pair left Vancouver on February 19, 2017 with their hopes high and a scheduled packed with workshops and community engagement activities.
However, it took them almost twice the estimated time to arrive in Senegal for their week-long stay.
Darcy Dunstan
Darcy Dunstan moved to Vancouver in September 2015 and a month later he was already working at the Sea Around Us.
Even though he is from a small town called Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island, this 20-something has always pushed to expand his horizons. First, he moved to the British Columbia capital to pursue a biology degree at the University of Victoria. Having grown up close to the ocean and having explored the underwater world since age 10, Darcy was convinced that he wanted to focus his career on marine biology.
Even before finishing his university degree, he was already combining his passion for traveling and his love for nature. In the summer of 2013, he spent a couple of months in Belize researching tropical ecology and culture. Later on, in February 2015, he flew to Thailand to help conduct coral reef and seagrass bed surveys at a marine conservation centre.
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Sarah Popov and Dyhia Belhabib.
Without a doubt, team efforts generate the best results.
With this mindset, a couple of scientists embarked on a journey to West Africa on February 18, 2017.
Dyhia Belhabib, Program Manager-Fisheries for Ecotrust Canada and a West Africa advisor to the Sea Around Us, and Sarah Popov, a research assistant at the Sea Around Us, were invited to Senegal by the MAVA Foundation with the aim of meeting a range of fisheries stakeholders and addressing the main challenges the subregion’s fishing sector is facing.
Senegal was the country of choice because that is where West Africa’s Fisheries Commission is based.
Dyhia Belhabib and Sarah Popov explain more in the following video.